I got my pcHDTV 5500 card back from Jason last night, and I’ve been playing around with it today with little success. Naturally, he got it working the first time.
Unfortunately, this is one of those areas where there is very little documentation, or where there is some, it’s disjointed or doesn’t explain what’s happening, so I’m completely lost. I’m trying out the 2.6.18 kernel, since the card drivers are included in it for that release. Everything looks like it’s loading okay, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to actually watch TV — either in HD or NTSC.
The driver evolution is a little confusing too. Apparently it’s both a v4l device and a dvb one. I think the NTSC one is the v4l driver, but I can’t be sure.
Looking at the forums, it appears that this thing already works natively with MPlayer’s dvb support. I’m not sure about that one, since I can’t confirm I’m doing anything right.
Ah well, it’s gonna be a fun little project figuring this all out for TV Tuner #4. Once I do, I’ll write some documentation.
Still having issues with your pcHDTV HD5500? I’ve been “enjoying” the little saga involved in getting mine working. Regardless, I’ve had fairly good luck with it, and I’ve gotten it to the point of being able to watch and record NTSC and ATSC broadcasts over cable. The drivers, save for a few completely undocumented issues, are pretty solid as long as you compile them yourself. I’ve had mixed luck with the included ones in 2.6.18.
The card comes with V4L drivers that expose the analog framegrabber in a /dev/video0 (I believe) and the DVB drivers expose the digital stream support for your ATSC and QAM. They’re separate, and they can’t be used simultaneously, but they both work well enough.
Anyway, I’ve been through the pain, so feel free to ping me for details.